Did anyone else manage to fly the jets effectively? I think I had 50 kills with the jets in total before I got shut down last night...erm this morning. Was trying to unlock guided missiles so I could actually help the ground fighters. I have the feeling I'm going to fly way too much in BF3 but I need a wingman.

Did anyone else manage to fly the jets effectively? I think I had 50 kills with the jets in total before I got shut down last night...erm this morning. Was trying to unlock guided missiles so I could actually help the ground fighters. I have the feeling I'm going to fly way too much in BF3 but I need a wingman.

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i'm up as a gunner. i can fly too, but have yet to master flying AND killing something at the same time

I still need practice with the jets, it's tough flying at those speeds and trying to turn and do ''fly by'' shootings on the ground. The roll over is very loose and easy to do, but the turning at those speeds can take some time, i might have to trying slowing down a bit.(well the beta is over so i won't be trying any time soon)

The helicopters are very easy to fly and shoot though. Feels the same as past Battlefields to me.

On September 29th we posted the files names that had been datamined off the Battlefield 3 Beta Files. We can now confirm that these map names found in the Beta are, in fact, the 9 maps that will be shipped with Battlefield 3 on October 25th. Instead of the Maps file name, we now have the appropriate Names…

We attended EA's Final Hours event and played some new multiplayer maps, a portion of the campaign, and a bit of the co-op
Words: Michael Grimm

One thing is clear, Battlefield 3 wants Modern Warfare’s crown, bad. Their latest trailer and ad campaign is entitled “Above and Beyond the Call”, and their free Battlelog service is clearly a direct competitor to MW3’s paid Elite service. With the game only a few weeks away, we attended a full day event and played a chunk of the campaign, the co-op and, of course, the multiplayer.

We kicked off the day with a sizable chunk of the campaign, and while EA is still a little protective of some of the plot points, expect a lot of the same political intrigue and twists that modern military shooters are famous for. The initial missions take place in a city near the Iraq-Iran border, and there’s a sense of paranoia as you move from building to building, knowing that your enemies are lurking in the shadows. There's a cool sequence in which your squad comes under sniper fire and you're forced to crawl behind cover and find where he's shooting from. Once your squad has spotted him, you whip out an AT4 anti-tank gun and put a fairly large hole in the building where the sniper used to be. The majority of the combat falls well within the regular FPS standard though, with squads of enemies attacking head-on, ducking behind cover and taking potshots.

After a few missions in the city, the game switched locations and put us in control of a pilot on a nearby battleship preparing to attack a military air base. The mission, “Going hunting” is BF3's answer to Modern Warfare's AC-130 missions, and it's a strong retort. The brief control tutorial is masked as a systems check, and the quiet run up to your first dogfight is intense and exciting. While you're only in charge of the plane’s weapons during this portion, the rival planes are smart and drop flares to throw your homing missiles off. The quiet hum of the jet and the muffled radio chatter contrasts well with the terrifying beeping of a locked missile coming up on your six. The next segment has you peppering the ground unit objectives with lasers and bombing runs, though this one definitely feels like the AC-130 sections we'er familiar with.

The game is favoring strong defense over offense at this point, with a heavy emphasis on cover and tactics over just straight run and gun. It took us several deaths to remember that you can once again go prone behind even the most diminutive cover. This explained why we were still catching bullets with our head when ducked behind a too short wall. The weapon recoil also took a steady hand, we picked up a light machine gun and really had to be patient trying to hit enemies at range with it. Fortunately, most of the game’s weapons feature a switch that lets you manually set whether the weapon will fire full automatic, three shot burst, or semi-automatic (single shot).

After a few campaign missions we jumped into co-op mode. If your initial impression of co-op reminds you of Modern Warfare’s Spec Ops, you wouldn't be too far off. Players choose from an number of scenarios and run through them with a friend, trying to complete it as quickly as possible and get the high score.

The scenario we played had us escaping from a large office/museum after capturing some intel. Even on normal difficulty, the co-op was challenging, there’s a huge number of enemies to handle, so communicating with your buddy as when to move and when to hunker down is important. The enemy does a number of unusual things, and the first few deaths taught us that the enemy isn’t afraid to flank and ambush you. The scenario concluded with us reaching a parking garage and piling into an SUV that one player had to pilot out of the garage while the second player rode shotgun, literally.

While the more linear nature of the campaign and co-op modes might ruffle the feathers of Battlefield die-hards, the multiplayer still has the kind of open maps that everyone expects. We only got our mitts on the console versions at this event, but from what we played, each multiplayer map is at least as big as what we remember from Bad Company 2. We were also glad to see some radical departures in the multiplayer map design.

If we had to single out our favorite map from what we played, Damavand Peak would be it. Damavand is a Rush map, and what makes it interesting is how it handles the spawn points. At one point the attacker’s spawn becomes a cliffside bunker with a sheer drop off. The next defending base is a couple of hundred feet down. While you could take one of the helicopters and gently set yourself down like a pretty princess, real men base jump off the bunker and pull their chute before they splatter all over the objective.

If that wasn’t fun enough, the final base in the map has you pressing into a tight tunnel that usually pitches two tanks against one another in tight quarters as the attacking infantry try to slip past unnoticed. While it may lack a bit of the signature Battlefield map openness, it’s a lot of fun. Just be prepared for confused players to idle around the bunker for 5-10 minutes before they realize they have to jump.

With just over two weeks to go, Battlefield 3 is looking ready to go toe to toe with one of the biggest franchises in gaming history. While the single player component is trying to beat Modern Warfare at its own game, the multiplayer remains very Battlefield, minimizing the focus on twitch skills in favor of tactics and teamwork. And that’s a point in their favor, even if it’s skewing more in the direction of Bad Company 2 rather than Battlefield 2.

We’ve got two new Videos featuring the A-10 and and a complete walkthrough the Rush Version of Caspian Border. The Rush version features some unseen vehicles like the A-10 Thunderbolt and the UH-1Y Venom Transport Helicopter and three mandatory Rush Stages. The first one is located at the Border Station. After the M-Com Stations have been taken out, the path follow’s through the Hill and Forest Area of the Map leading all the way up to the second M-Com emplacement at the Gas Station. From there you make your way to the third Stage, which happens to be the Russian Deployment Zone. Destroy the last two M-Com Stations there and you’ve won the Round.

Last week, I attended an all-day Battlefield 3 event in San Francisco. Over the course of the day, I had a chance to try out the game's multiplayer, single-player, and co-op sections. Multiplayer impressions are here, and my take on the single-player missions I played is here.

In addition to playing the game, I had a chance to talk with Battlefield 3's executive producer, Patrick Bach. He was a pleasure to speak with, refreshingly frank about the game's development process, the challenges faced in making an ambitious multiplayer game like Battlefield 3, and even the technical difficulties they were having with the PC version that day. We talked for a while about the public reaction to the beta, which has been mixed.

Kotaku: So, how has it been, hearing some of the negative feedback from the Beta?

Patrick Bach: The only thing we can do is tell people that: "These are the things we have fixed since the beta." And also based on the feedback from the beta. But other than that… you need to let people play it. The problem with having a beta is that you hand out a product that is not done. Deliberately. You do it because you want to get feedback on not only what the players think, but also on how things are holding up, what can we read from the network traffic, how is everything holding up, how are all of the systems that are brand new holding up. You could argue that maybe we shouldn't do a beta."

It's a double-edged sword.

If we don't do [a beta], then we might have problems day one. So the only way to ensure that we have less problems day one is to have a beta. But if you have a beta (laughs) people will hate you, and think that you're stupid.

We get complaints like, "How can you guys miss obvious things like A, B, and C?" And we didn't miss it. We just weren't done with it. But we had to get it out so that we get results back, so we can fix it. The lead time when you do a beta is actually pretty long. You need to go through certification on consoles, and do a lot of things before you get it out. And since you want to get it out on all three platforms at the same time to avoid further whining… (chuckles)… it takes as long as the longest platform certification time.

"This was a real beta, and I don't think people are used to it. They get the product, and they think, "you have to entertain me," because it's an entertainment product."

How long is that?

Around a month and a half. Which means that when we're done with that beta, we say "Okay, this is it. Now let's go back and finish the game." When we got to the point [six weeks later] that we actually released the beta, the game was in completely different shape. We couldn't really tell people because then we'd have to go through the process again.

It sounds like certification hobbles the beta process somewhat.

Yes.

What's a way to make that better in the future?

One way of fixing the problem is… don't make betas. At least not open betas. Because often when you see betas, sometimes they are actually demos. But they call it a beta, to sound cool. This was a real beta, and I don't think people are used to it. They get the product, and they think, "you have to entertain me," because it's an entertainment product.

And it's like, "Well, it's a broken entertainment product, because we want your feedback." And they say, "Well, I understand that, but it's not polished enough!" And we say, "Well, that's exactly what we're talking about!"

So the challenge is: listen, but don't overreact. Understand that people are disappointed, but that you have to do it.

Or, don't do it. Don't make a beta. At least not an open one.

And just do closed testing.

But that's hard as well. We had an alpha as well, that was much worse.

Did any of that leak to the public?

Yes, it always does. And people complain about that as well, but it wasn't as many people. It wasn't such a big hassle. Now, it's a big thing, people make videos of it and we say, "yeah, thank you; we know, we know."

And what you're playing today [at this media event], except for the stability issues, the game doesn't have those issues anymore. It should be more or less 99% mitigated.

Yeah, other than the stability it runs fine. I'm not seeing too many in-game bugs.

But then of course, we do have those stability issues. And other frustrations.

Right, seems like there's always going to be some problem or another. So after it launches, you'll be looking at those things and updating the game?

"We know that we won't hit 100% at launch. We won't be able to say "It's perfect." Better to release it than to wait another year. Release it, and make sure we follow up on it. "
Absolutely. Patching of this game and updating, if it's Battlelog or the core game, that's a big, long-term engagement. We really want to stay in the game post-launch. From an economic standpoint, that's not the cleverest thing to do, but that's not why we make games. We want to make games that we can be proud of, and releasing a game of this magnitude... it's quite a big game.

We know that we won't hit 100% at launch. We won't be able to say "It's perfect." Better to release it than to wait another year. Release it, and make sure we follow up on it. We've been shipping so many Battlefield games that we know that people will keep playing it. If it's good enough, they'll keep playing it.

I still play Bad Company 2.

But it wasn't great on day one. People hated it on day one. It was a complete disaster, according to the forums, it was the crappiest game ever. And then we patched it and fixed some issues. And now it's like some people think it was perfect from day one. It was the best game ever! Why can't Battlefield 3 be perfect from day one? But I mean [Battlefield 3 ] is much better today day one than Bad Company 2 was day one.

What did you think of the reaction to the beta for Bad Company 2? Was that beta feedback the same?

It was the same, just smaller. "It was the worst game ever." So we're used to it, but now it's blown out of proportion because there are I think six times the amount of people playing this beta as we had in Bad Company and it's the same problems. They say the same things: "You're stupid," "We hate you."

Yes I am under the impression you will need 2GB cards. GPU-Z monitoring of my 6850 Crossfire in the beta at 1920x1200 on High (Shadows Medium) with 2X AA and Post Proc at Medium showed an average of 985MB VRAM used. Wish could see use on second card too, of course. My sudden and serious FPS tanks on Ultra were surely due to running out of free VRAM. It would run decent for awhile and then tank and pretty much be unable to recover.

Yes I am under the impression you will need 2GB cards. GPU-Z monitoring of my 6850 Crossfire in the beta at 1920x1200 on High (Shadows Medium) with 2X AA and Post Proc at Medium showed an average of 985MB VRAM used. Wish could see use on second card too, of course. My sudden and serious FPS tanks on Ultra were surely due to running out of free VRAM. It would run decent for awhile and then tank and pretty much be unable to recover.

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A 2gb card would be the one to choose. I have noticed that my 5850 was maxed during the beta but the retail is suppose to different in terms of settings

sitting on Ultra settings during Caspian border the Game would use around 1600-1700mb of vram no granted Ultra is really not working correctly only textures and i think shadows worked but obviously they have a huge impact on vram usage